The Standlake Birder -

      Shining Honey Creeper After a restful nights sleep at Punta Leona we met Paco for our usual early morning walk around the grounds. The highlight of which for me was Paco finding a baby Fer-de-lance snake trying to eat a frog which seemed much too large for it. It was extremely well camouflaged in the leaf litter, only being obvious when it moved, a bit problematic given its reputation!   The fer-de-lance snake, also known as the Terciopelo and Barba amarilla in Spanish, is the most dangerous venomous snake in central America and really is something you do not want to mess with. They can weigh up to 6 kilograms and are often 1.2 to 1.8 meters in length.    Here is a description I found of what happens if you get  bitten by one.   “Bite symptoms include pain, oozing from the puncture wounds, local swelling that may increase for up to 36 hours, bruising that spreads from the bite site, blisters, numbness, mild fever, headache, bleeding fro...

  The Scops Owl and I have history!   About a year ago I trudged off to my least favourite UK birding location, Kent, and spent a thoroughly miserable evening in a cold dark park dipping one. Kent hates me! It’s a really rotten place to get to from Worcestershire and I’ve dipped most of the rarities I’ve tried for there. Fast forward to last Saturday and another one was found in a similar urban park in Swansea. Given that this is only the second UK December record, the Kent one being the first, I guess its not totally inconceivable that it’s the same bird out to get me again. Paranoid, not me!   With lots of other commitments this week the first evening I could go was Thursday. It was still reported on Wednesday night so I headed off to Swansea Thursday afternoon with a plan to get there around 4pm.   Now the only way to see an Owl in pitch blackness, apart from looking in the infrared, is to illuminate it. Now its fair to say that this divides opinion amongst birder...

Pacific Screech Owl   Our home for the next two nights was the wonderful   La Ensenada Lodge, our own little bit of paradise. It was by far my favourite lodge of the whole trip being remote, rustic, and surrounded by wonderful countryside and birds. It was approach by driving for an hour on what is best described as dirt track – well done Rodrigo! I very much preferred this style of lodge to the much more touristy hotels we stayed in later. The lodge was located on the gulf of Nicoya on the Pacific side of Costa Rica where the habitat was quite different to the rain forests of previous days. Here we were in the dry forest  which has a well-defined wet and dry season. In the dry season most of the trees shed their leaves to conserve water.   Thursday 7 th  November started again with the usual early morning coffee followed by an hours pre-breakfast birding with Paco. Down a track a short distance from the lodge Paco showed us a group of Common Tent Making Ba...

                    Ferruginous Pygmy Owl Our home for the next two nights was the amazing Arenal Observatory lodge in the shadow of the imposing Arenal volcano. The volcano was dormant  for hundreds of years until 1968 when it erupted unexpectedly, destroying the small town of Tabacón tragically killing 87 people. Thankfully it has been dormant since the last eruption in October 2010. The area surrounding Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica is characterized by a humid and cloudy climate, influenced by its tropical location and varying elevations. The only occasion in two days when the Volcano was not obscured by clouds! The dawn chorus was a rather unusual one, Howler Monkeys doing exactly what is says on the tin.  Our first morning started with the usual coffee taken on the viewing balcony overlooking the volcano. Just after first light the feeders became very active keeping us all engrossed until our  communal breakf...